Today there are few clues to the historical significance of the battle that took place between Northumbrians and an invading Welsh army at Heavenfield.
Just a wooden cross, put up in the 1930s, marks the spot which is near Chollerford, north of Hexham and in the shadow of Hadrian's Wall.
Indeed, many of the details of the conflict have been lost in the mists of time. Even its precise date is a matter of debate among historians. They speculate on 633, 634 or 635.
But this battle was vital for the future of not just Northumberland, but the entire country.
And the Northumbrians would have been seen as the underdogs. They were outnumbered by a particularly vicious invading army.
The Northumbrian king Oswald had to summon an army at short notice after returning from a 17 year exile in Western Scotland.
The legend goes that the night before the battle took place, a worried Oswald was visited by St Columba who told him that he would win.
And Oswald pulled a master stroke - using the abandoned but still standing Hadrian's Wall as a defensive base. The wall in those days still stood up to 10 feet wide and 20 feet tall.
The Welsh began the battle by attacking from the East but were unable to outflank Oswald's troops.
Faced with defeat, the Welsh turned and fled, and their leader - called Cadwallon or Cadwalla depending on which text you read - was executed.
The great Christian scholar Bede regarded the battle as key to the survival of Christianity in the ancient Kingdom of Northumbria and therefore Britain as a whole.
Oswald used the victory to reunify the Kingdom of Northumbria - which had been split into two rival kingdoms - and invited monks from Iona to set up a monastery at the Holy Island of Lindisfarne. From there, the new religion of Christianity gradually took hold across the entire country.
Thanks to David Simpson for supplying source material for this section.
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